Golf Outing to Support Family Promise & The Nyadire Connection

getdataPlease join us for the The Bridges to support Family Promise and The Nyadire Connection on June 15, 2013. The Bridges is a 4 person scramble event with a shotgun start at 9am. We will have a great day of golf at the beautiful Ponderosa Golf Course in Hookstown, PA. The event will include a 4-person scramble, lunch at the turn, delicious dinner and awards receptions following the golf.

Special Offer: Included with your online registration is a 1-year subscription to Golf Digest (a $10 value). Click here for offer and refund details. Register now and remember to invite your friends to play. Just click “Tell a Friend” and you can send them a link to this registration site automatically.

We’re anticipating a full field this year so register early. The Bridges Golf Outing was built with the idea that we are all responsible for providing bridges for those in need to cross to a better place. On behalf of The Nyadire Connection and Family Promise, we thank you for helping to build the bridge!

Date: June 15, 2013
Times: 9:00 am
Fees: Individual Golfer:
$80.00

Foursomes:
$320.00

Foursome Plus Tee Sponsorship:
$345.00

Record Speed Recycling

This past weekend, we had another great Volunteer Saturday at ITT Tech’s Tarentum campus.  Clocking in at record speeds, we ran diagnostic triage and Edubuntu imaging on a total of 98 computers from 8AM – 4PM.

We owe a special thanks to Kim Coles of the County of Westmoreland Mac Users Group (COWMUG) for coming in extra early to run the welcome table. Also, a big thanks to Debbie and Mark Neuherz for transporting all of the computers to a new storage cage site in Pittsburgh Mills.

You can sign up for future volunteer work days with Computer Reach through our Pittsburgh Cares page. We are a new Non-Profit Priority Partner with Pittsburgh Cares. We’re looking forward to reaching a broader audience to help us reach our goals.

Check out the video and say “Hello” to 22 hard-working volunteers that beat the clock on a beautiful Saturday donating their time and talents. Thank you all!

 

Happy Earth Day!

There are many ways to celebrate Earth Day. You can plant some trees in your community, do litter clean up, or just try to conserve your own energy use. You can also take advantage of electronics recycling!

“In 2011, the U.S. electronics recycling industry processed 3 to 4 million tons of used and end-of-life electronics equipment. More than 70 percent of the collected gadgets can be recycled, recovering items such as plastic, steel, aluminum, copper, gold and silver to be used in new products.”

A few Earth Day Electronics Recycling Events:

Monday, April 22
Free Community Electronic Recycling Earth Day 2013
McGinnis Sisters Special Foods Store – Route 228

Saturday, April 27
Electronics Collection Event – Allegheny County
Natrona Heights – (One Municipal Drive)
Hosted by Harrison Township (Contact Faith Payne 724-226-1393)

Ongoing
Goodwill Computer Donation Center

Accepted devices at most e-recycling facilities include: printers, toner and ink jet cartridges, desktop and notebook PCs and servers, monitors and TVs (CRT, LCD, LED or Plasma), mice, keyboards, computer speakers, external devices (CD/DVD burners or scanners, zip drives, hard drives, wireless routers, switches, modems), small kitchen appliances (mixers, toasters, blenders, microwave), stereo equipment and speakers (including car stereos), hair dryers, curling irons, video game consoles, electronic cables, digital cameras, copy machines, fax machines, DVD players, cell phones, telephones, PDAs and VCRs.

Upcoming Volunteer Day & PittsburghCares.org

We’re having another big volunteer work day next Saturday, April 27th from 8:00am – 4:00pm, with most of the work taking place in the morning. We have 2 objectives for the day: imaging and moving.  Ubuntu imaging will take place over a PXE Server system at ITT Tech. Box moving of over 100 computers will take place all morning. Please use our WhenIsGood form to fill out the hours you plan on helping out. You’ll also find more event details and directions there.

If you plan to attend, please sign in at our brand new Pittsburgh Cares site (please note: you’ll need to initiate a new password on your first login).

In a move to scale up our volunteer operations at Computer Reach we have joined PittsburghCares.orgforces with Pittsburgh Cares, an online volunteer coordination portal. The mission of Pittsburgh Cares is, “to maximize the impact of our regional nonprofit partners by mobilizing volunteers and engaging the community.”

By partnering with the broader volunteer community around Pittsburgh our Computer Reach members will see other opportunities to be involved with community outreach all over Western PA.

Back with Duquesne University Students

We had another great work day with volunteer students from Duquesne University at the Goodwill Apple “Annex” at 2400 Carson Street on the South Side of Pittsburgh. This video shows our 7th week, working on recycling the 50th computer with the students! This has been a great partnership over the course of the Spring semester. We hope all the students are learning about computer components, responsible recycling and the e-waste problem. Many thanks to instructor Loraine Sauchin for coordinating all of this.

You can read about our previous days with the students and enjoy videos here, here and here.

LibrePlanet 2013

CommitChangeBeth Lynn Eicher, a free software expert with fourteen years of free software support experience nationally and abroad, will be a featured speaker at LibrePlanet’s conference at Harvard University this weekend, March 23-24.

This annual conference brings together global free software community developers, activists, academics and computer users to promote the distribution of free software throughout the world. We’re very excited to have Beth Lynn there representing Computer Reach. She was a key player in developing our Ubuntu Linux program and is our Free Software Director.

Beth Lynn was invited to speak at the conference because of her extensive international work through Computer Reach, including a recent trip to Ghana during which 100 refurbished computers loaded with Ubuntu Linux software were installed in schools in several cities.

To date, Computer Reach has provided over 4,000 computers to schools and community centers in seven states and twelve countries. For more information visit the stories page of our website.

Volunteer Work Day at ITT Tech Tarentum

 

On Saturday February 23rd, we had our first volunteer work day at ITT Tech in Tarentum, PA. You may have seen our earlier post asking readers to sign up to volunteer with us in this new space the last Saturday of each month. You can still sign up here!

We started in our new space with a very productive day. We unloaded 81 Apple computer boxes from our U-Haul truck at Construction Junction and then loaded 116 Linux computer boxes for for transport back to ITT refurbishing and imaging production work.

  • We had 26 volunteers attend.
  • They logged 146 man-hours in one day.
  • We ate 10 pizzas and drank well over 36 water bottles!

Many thanks to Director Joshua Joseph, Computer Science Director Bill Gano and Career Services Director Bart Blum for great logistical support today.

Check out the video below.

Week 4 with Duquesne University Volunteers

 

This past Friday, we had our fourth workday with volunteers from Duquesne University. You can read about weeks one, two and three in these posts.

On February 22nd, We had 2 faculty members and 7 students working at our warehouse. We went beyond de-manufacturing and showed the students our procedures for imaging Macs with Deploy Studio. Many thanks to the students for helping to load 50+ boxes for movement between our South Side and Point Breeze recycling locations.

Inspired to help? Sign up to volunteer with us on the last Saturday of each month!

New Saturday Volunteer Time

We’re very excited to announce a new year-round site for recycling on the last Saturday of every month. You can now join us at ITT Technical Institute in Tarentum (behind the Pittsburgh Mills Mall).

 

Several people have requested advanced notice of our Saturday recycling events so they can set their calendars and commit to a few hours on a weekend far in advance. Now, with this new location, you can do just that! Visit this poll to sign up for a date and time to volunteer that works for you, all the way up through December 2013! You may come back to edit these volunteering times as much as needed. Our leadership team is notified when any times are chosen or removed, so there is no need to email or call us.

Our first volunteer workday event at ITT will be this Saturday February 23  from 10am – 4pm. We will be sorting and fixing 200 computers !

WHERE: 100 Pittsburgh Mills Circle, Tarentum, PA 15084 (724) 274-1400

WHEN: Choose “When It Is Good” by click on the times to highlight them in bright green. Registering through the poll helps us prepare lunch and all day refreshments.
The ITT campus has free parking and is connected to the back of Pittsburgh Mills, a great mall with food and shopping and entertainment for all ages. If you need more information on volunteering with Computer Reach, contact Dave Sevick at 724-779-0099 or email sevick@computereach.com.

See you all soon!

Help Put Computers in Students’ Hands

Studetns at BJWLAs of this month, our Pittsburgh area volunteers have refurbished for re-use 4,051 Computers! This is an amazing number that we are so proud to share with you. But, we always want more! That’s why we can use your help to fund several local school projects.

When we place a computer in a school, each computer serves 5 students every day.

By re-using equipment, rather than buying new, each computer we recycle reduces our carbon footprint.

If you’re interested in helping with a donation, or helping by donating your time as a volunteer, call our Executive Director Dave Sevick for more details. You can also donate directly on our website.  YES, we are a 501c3 charity!

Thanks again for all the volunteering and funding support as we continue to grow.

About this photo:
This picture is a still from a video that shows our Computer Reach team delivering a total of 11 computers to a Family Resources site at BJWL in the Hill District of Pittsburgh on August 17, 2011. LaRay Moton is the Site coordinator and Jamayia Moore is the site supervisor. The kids were really great and excited to get the new technology. Volunteer Marty Swartz deserves credit for taking the time to help organize and deliver the computers to this site.